You're Gonna Carry Us Away
by Erik's Champion
Summary: On the eve of the final confrontation with Bakura, Atem and Yuugi reflect back on their time together. Intense platonic puzzleshipping.


The title for this story comes from the song Strangers by the Kinks. I own nothing

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"_It was the wicked and wild wind/ Blew down the doors and let me in/ Shattered windows and the sound of drums/ People couldn't believe what I'd become/ Revolutionaries wait/ For my head on a silver plate/ Just a puppet on a lonely string/ Oh who would ever want to be king?" – Viva La Vida, Coldplay_

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Yuugi trembled slightly in his sleep, a thin sheen of sweat sprouting on his forehead and creeping down his brow. Atem was shaken by a twinge of empathy as he watched the boy's hands ball into tense fists and his lips rapidly trace the unvoiced words that were stampeding through his dreams, clouding them with thick billows of smoke.

Even now it was hard to not feel what Yuugi felt. His emotions were so strong, so vivid; they had a way of sneaking into his most vulnerable corners and rendering his steady emotional core fragile and frail. Just gazing at his face, Atem could feel Yuugi's tension tightening inside him like a rope; he could sense the fear storming behind his tightly clenched eyes.

He smiled sadly as he gently began to nudge Yuugi awake, but the instant his hand made contact with Yuugi's arm he was paralyzed by a shock that raced through him like lightning.

He had never touched Yuugi before. During their years together, the contents of their minds had been separated by the thinnest and most tremulous of membranes—and yet no matter how close they had come on the metaphysical plane, there had always been an insurmountable physical barrier between them. They had existed as parallel spirits in the same body, irrevocably allied and yet never able to intersect, like two little planets trapped in the same eternal orbit around the sun.

Atem stared, transfixed by the sight of his hand gripping Yuugi's shoulder. He had never felt so aware of the presence of his own body—the body which still felt large, awkward, and lonely hanging around him. Every muscle and tendon seemed to ache under the weight of existence, every centimeter of his skin bristled in the caustic evening air, and every heartbeat caused him to quake and shudder in the wake of a force as resounding and wild as thunder.

And the realization that something previously so unfathomable—the simple gesture of being able to wake the boy who had cradled his soul—was now within the realm of possibility quickly inundated him in a wave of emotions. The mad rush of feelings seemed to rush in from all sides, blocking out all other sensations and rendering him temporarily blind and deaf to all but the bitter heat that seeped from the soles of his feet to the crown of his forehead.

And every heartbeat reminded him that Yuugi's heart was no longer his own, that he now had to fend for himself, that he had surrendered something dear to him which he could never regain. What exactly that something was he couldn't articulate, but knowing that it had vanished immersed him in a dense and opaque sadness.

Atem was drawn out of his reflections when Yuugi's eyes fluttered open. "Pharaoh…what is it…?" Still wreathed in sleep, his words were soft and foggy.

"I need to speak with you, Yuugi. Immediately."

Yuugi knew better than to ask if anything was wrong. As far back as he could remember, urgency had never meant good news.

The two walked briskly through the palace's abandoned hallways. Atem had ordered his guards with families to care for to return home; the few that remained on duty were stationed throughout the city—silent and steadfast as ghosts patrolling a graveyard. They hadn't been pleased to be sent away—claiming that abandoning their pharaoh in his hour of greatest need amounted to no less than treason. Atem had insisted.

Despite the strain of anxiety sizzling in the air, Yuugi couldn't help but admire the grandeur of the scene playing out before him. Atem's gaze radiated prowess and authority, the sinuous slopes of his body seemed as strong and defined as the mountain ranges that loomed in the distance—the product of thousands of years of pitiless battle between the earth, wind, and sea that now—despite appearing static and silent—secretly teemed with a brutal, barbaric desire to burst from their bounds and ascend to the greatest pinnacles of existence. Every footstep appeared poised to bend the floor beneath him—just as he had bent the fabric of time to return to his former homeland. It was no wonder, Yuugi thought, that in his subject's eyes he had glowed as brilliantly as the sun.

And—Yuugi couldn't help but admit with a wry smile—the swirling robes, gold, and sparkling jewels did him much more justice than his plain old school uniform and a few belt buckles ever could.

Atem led them to one of the highest balconies in the palace, affording them a view of the battle brewing in the darkness beneath them. Bonfires glared like angry eyes on the horizon, sending up dark billows of bitter smoke that stung their eyes and stained their lungs. Stray shrieks reverberated through the city streets, sending a chill through them both and making Atem grimace. The whole world around them seemed to rumble—doing all it could to keep from bursting open like a gaping wound.

Atem glared sternly over the landscape for several moments before sighing, turning to Yuugi, and beginning to formally construct the thoughts and impressions that had been plaguing him like an army of phantasmagorical demons since his return.

"Yuugi, do you remember how I acted when I first entered your world? How I was so…angry, so eager to blindly administer vengeance, so quick to resort to the most deplorable degrees of violence and cruelty?"

"Well…I…I guess, Pharaoh, but you're not like that now."

"I know. And that is thanks to you, Yuugi." Yuugi felt himself blossom in the warmth of Atem's smile. "I remember when I first entered your world—with no memories, no sense of myself or understanding of my identity—I thought your world was a senseless and horrible place. All I saw around me—the disregard for human life and dignity, the selfishness, the resignation to suffering and emptiness—it horrified me to the core.

"And I knew of no way to respond to that violence, that degradation, but to reflect it back on itself. I tried to extinguish hate with more hate, senseless with more senseless, only I convinced myself that the cause for which I was fighting was noble and justifiable. I saw your world as a soulless wasteland thronged by evil, and I saw myself as the only one who could expurgate it.

"I always wondered why that world was so broken, what it was that made its people so hollow, so frail. Even as my instinct to resort to violence faded, my horror at the degree of misery that the people of your world are capable of inflicting on one another never truly did. And I just wondered…what was it that made so many so bitter and unfeeling?

"Now that I am here I believe I am beginning to understand. The seed of the evil that plagues your world was planted here, in mine, in this," he angrily shock the Millennium puzzle which dangled from his neck, "and in everything else that is separating us from them." He gestured towards the city below them, to the countryside beyond that.

"We've built up so many barricades to try to keep the evil out. Yet, the harder we tried, the more resolutely it took root _inside_ of us. We deluded ourselves that we could build a kingdom of love and enlightenment on the foundations of hate and ignorance, we believed that we could promote peace through slaughter."

His figure, a moment ago so steeped in majesty, now seemed smaller and less defined—Atem looked as if he were considering dissolving into the cloudy shadows around him.

"I am coming to understand that the peace that we carved out that day in Kul Elna was never meant to be shared with the Egyptian people. In fact, I do not believe that we were seeking peace at all. It was _power_, Yuugi. The peace crafted by those in power is often no more than a means of oppressing all those who pose the slightest risk of opposing them.

"The day we made the Millennium Items we set the precedent for everything and everyone that was to follow us. We asserted, through our actions, that it is acceptable for the strong to impose their will upon the weak, that it is acceptable to deceive and manipulate those that we are supposed to protect, that the lives of others are worth nothing in comparison to our own desires!" As he spoke his face and eyes became heated, his chest and shoulders seemed to heave with anger.

"And we have seen the effects of this philosophy first hand, haven't we Yuugi? In all our friends who were betrayed by those who were supposed to be their guardians, in all those who have attempted to hurt us to meet their own petty aims, in all the pain we have had to witness and endure. We could trace the roots of that pain back thousands of years, back to exactly this place."

He paused for a moment, giving Yuugi time to let his words assimilate. Yuugi gazed into the darkness around him, wondering why if he was at a turning point in history he felt so small and inconsequential.

"When I entered your world I thought that it was a moral vacuum." Atem sighed and leaned against the wall behind him, crossing his arms over his chest. "And now I finally understand why."

"Have you been thinking that, now that you've returned, you might have the opportunity to change it?" Yuugi ventured cautiously.

Atem turned to him, giving Yuugi the honor of being on the receiving end of his famous mischievous smirk for the first time.

"That is exactly what I was thinking."

"But…how?!" Since arriving in the birthplace of his darker half, Yuugi had felt suffocated by the weight of continual confusion. There were moments when this world felt so different from his own—when he heard the painful cries of Atem's friends and subjects as their lives were wrested from them, when the chaotic cacophony of blood and violence rang in the streets, when he heard the guards discussing the fists of battle and revolution which were clenching tightly around their city's throat—that he was certain that this world could never have given birth to anything that resembled the one he knew.

But then there were other, more hauntingly sinister moments—when he heard Priest Set snarl out his commands and take his security forces to the streets, when he had seen Bakura threaten to seize the souls of the Pharoah's guards—that the events playing out before him had felt all too familiar. The realization that Atem might be correct began as a faint whisper in the back of his mind but quickly grew into a blood-curdling scream.

"I was hoping that you could help me with that, Yuugi." Atem's voice had melted into the tone he used to comfort him when he could see the fear and uncertainty growing in his eyes.

"How could I possibly…I—I can't make those kinds of decisions!"

"But I believe that you can. Tell me, Yuugi, have you truly not yet grasped how important you are in this narrative?"

"What are you talking about, Pharaoh?" Yuugi laughed nervously. "I'm not important, I mean compared to you—"

"But where would I be without you? Certainly not here. Yuugi—" He kneeled down next to Yuugi on the floor, gently resting his hand on his shoulder. "I never would have seen this if it were not for you. I never would have been capable of seeing it if you hadn't taught me how. If it had not been for your influence, my soul would still be as bitter and cold as on the day that you solved the Millennium Puzzle." He gently cupped Yuugi's chin in his palm and tilted his face up to look directly into his eyes. "I don't know how you did it, Yuugi, but somehow you've remained immune to all this. All the hate, hopelessness, and distrust that has lurked in the hearts and minds of humankind for thousands of years—it hasn't degraded you. There is something in your soul that I needed to see, that I needed to take with me back to this time. Every good thing in me comes from you."

Yuugi could feel himself blushing under the intensity of Atem's gaze, though he had to admit that there was something distinctly comforting about being in his presence. Even when Atem had only been able to appear before him as the most effervescent of apparitions, there was a security in his company that was stronger than iron. For years Atem had fortified his heart, had guided him through the world's treacherous turns, had been his defender against danger and darkness.

And now, nearly encapsulated in his arms but divorced from his heart, Yuugi felt that his companion was both exceedingly close and infinitely far away. He shook his head resolutely, but his conflicting emotions only seemed to become more muddled in response.

"Yuugi, is everything alright?"

"I don't know, Pharaoh. It's just that so much is changing so quickly and everything seems so…serious now…"

"I know, Yuugi." He sighed. "This is the most serious of the challenges that we have faced, and that is why I am so glad that I have you with me."

"I just don't see what I could possibly do to help you." Yuugi shrugged helplessly.

Atem smiled again and laughed softly. "Just do as you always would. All you have to do is exist, to be here now—that is enough."


End file.
